I was hoping to learn why the pixelated designs started appearing. Author says they work; but what led anyone to think that those designs might work? Why did they try them in the first place? And actually, why do they work?
I find it bizarre that this is all done by private companies, competing in public competitions, with royalties to be paid for the chosen design. And I'm quite surprised that some designs were found wanting because they don't work under IR (e.g. the soldier shines against the background). That sounds like they're using the wrong dyes; surely a decent design methodology would lead to such problems being remedied by incremental improvement?
It's not really so much about the pixels being square as the fractal-ish nature of mordern pixel camos that result in a "scale invariance" effect. There's details and contrast at the level of the small pixels, and there's details and contrasts are medium levels, and then again at large levels. Previous US army camo mostly had detail at only one scale level.
Exactly. Very very few things in nature actually are made of large blobs of a single color (unless you're very shortsighted). Honestly, it baffles me why militaries didn't realize this earlier.
In combat, camouflage is really the VERY last line of defense possible, and a fairly weak one at that. If the difference between staying alive and being dead is the pattern of your clothing, a lot of things have already gone seriously wrong and your chances of survival are not great.
In the grand scheme of things, camo relatively high-hanging fruit. Money and time have mostly been spent on building superior weapons, armor, and of course training. Camo is a very small optimization in comparison and when the Army and Air Force decided to change up their BDU patterns, it was viewed by me and my fellow service members as largely a public image stunt. ("Look everyone, we're modern!")
Edit: to be clear, I'm only referring to uniforms... snipers and such use camouflage netting for example that is tailored to their exact location and can be extremely effective at "hiding in plain sight."
>>In combat, camouflage is really the VERY last line of defense possible
Current military member here. It is also the first line of defense against fratricide. It means your friends can tell you from the not-friends. A distinct pattern, unique to your organization, is what stops aircraft from dropping on you. So as current patterns trickle out into private hands, eventually every military organization needs to update its look.
In the first phase of Ukrainian war soldiers were firing a lot of line of sight, it does matter. And especially the IR / night vision opportunities are real.
It's very 'low hanging fruit'. It's ridiculous that that a 20 Trillion dollar Army has 'camouflage' that is very clearly crap next to better camo.
These tests could have literally been run in a day, even back in the 1950s.
Some soldiers, some screens, a few cameras, some changes in lighting and it would have been evident.
Moreover, it's reasonable to be suspect in whether an organization that can't handle such a basic R&D task is going to be able to handle the more complicated things.
There are, it seems, a few aspects that went into the seemingly-obviously-poor decision to go with UCP.
The first is that the criteria that appears to have been most important was performance in near-IR (i.e., night vision). Humans can't see in NIR themselves, so it's not readily apparent that the UCP is actually pretty good camo in NIR conditions. It's pretty atrocious in visible light, though.
The second is the requirement that the camo pattern be good in all environments. And "standard" woodland patterns to be utterly horrendous in sandy desert environments, while desert patterns do similarly bad in woodland environments. And you can see how something like the UCP might score well--while it's not a good camo pattern for any visible pattern, it sticks out less than a standard woodland in desert or vice versa. Of course, there were other patterns at that time that performed strictly better than UCP in all environments (save NIR).
The main kicker, though, is that the winning pattern seems to have been constructed out of elements of all the participating patterns... with no follow-up work done to make sure that the resulting combination actually worked. As you say, this is where some tests would have saved an awful lot of embarrassment, and my suspicion is these tests were not run for either time or money reasons. (And yes, this is a false economy here, but it's one that I can really believe bureaucracies pursuing).
There is historical precedence for this kind of short-sightedness however: the Mark 14 Torpedo, the main torpedo the US used in WW2. Which didn't work, and the Navy's Board of Ordnance took a couple years (and ultimately an unsanctioned live-fire test demonstrating that it didn't work) to be convinced that they actually didn't work rather than the submariners being packs of incompetent morons.
> camouflage is really the VERY last line of defense possible
Doesn't it go: 'don't be seen, if you're seen don't be acquired, if you're acquired don't be hit, if you're hit don't be penetrated, if you're penetrated don't be killed'? Camouflage ('don't be seen') is the first layer on the onion, not the last!
I'm sure everyone has a story like this, but I was in the Army back when they had the green and black blobby camouflage, and we were doing a training exercise against some California National Guard unit. My squad leader and I were at a forward observation point, got bored, and decided to infiltrate them. We ended up behind their lines under some kind of evergreen tree with branches hanging to the ground, so a bit dark, but broad daylight otherwise. So some guy from the "enemy" side peeked underneath the tree, stared straight at us, not three feet away, then turned around and left. (Their side was wearing shirts inside-out so we could tell each other apart.) I guess I did my face paint OK that day.
It's hard to interpret those Navy blueberry uniforms as anything but pointless optics and possibly inter-service ego nonsense between the decision makers involved. A uniform that doesn't blend in with ships, docks, or beaches, but is actually a serious hindrance in a person overboard situation. Oh and it's about as fireproof as a grease soaked rag.
Thankfully rationality eventually prevailed, but not before wasting 100's of millions, a portion of which was out of pocket for sailors.
Good camo is broadband. Camo nets, ghillie suits help spread and dissipate a thermal signature, making it more difficult to pick up from the noise. And unless you have a JWST and know exactly where to point it (and obviously the whole idea of snipers is that you don't know), good luck trying to find a human head-sized target that's a klick away from you.
> With thermal imaging, do snipers still rely on camouflage?
Does everyone on a battlefield have thermal imaging? Even if there's a technology X that can defeat Y, if X can't be deployed widely, then X can still be useful.
Not everyone; but at about $1-2K per unit these days, it is increasingly available even to third-world militaries, such as the Taliban.
In Ukraine, it's one of the things that are often crowdfunded by either side, along with NVDs and drones. Of course, when they are in short supply, they usually go to the units that can use the most effectively, such as recon & sabotage groups (диверсионно-разведывательная группа; not sure what's the proper English term for that, but it's basically guys who work behind enemy lines). So even if not everybody has them, the guys who are the most likely to mess you up probably do.
In English those would fall under the vague umbrella of "special forces".
The most famous from the USA are Navy Seals, followed by Army Rangers, but every branch of the military has its own special forces. And other countries militaries do as well.
The one whose official remit probably looks most like the group that you describe are Air Force Special Reconnaissance (SR). It is their mission to deploy deep behind enemy lines, figure out enemy operations, and work with other units in any area of the military to take out high value targets. (For example by calling in air strikes or artillery.)
I just had a really odd thought cross my head and want to just document here before I forget it:
The way rifles work with recoils driving the expulsion of a shell after firing and using that force to load the next round to chamber (the famous AK47 design)
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Would there be a method of attaching a compressed water bottle with valve with a donut nozzle with vents out at angles to the optimal suppression of the muzzle flash.
The idea being that, like a paintball gun, the machine's trigger pull, also has a tangential trig that pulls an outburst a micro second from the rifle, in a ring mist of water/(some more expensive, toxic military fire-suppressant (ironic) to reduce the muzzle flash on shot...
May it reduce the muzzle flare? or is it too weak? Should it launch behind muzzle, after muzzle?
The bullet down the barrel triggers the valve when it hits 50% of barrel length. Once that induction occurs, it triggers the valve, and the flame suppressant cloud is spit out micro seconds prior to bullet breach...
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I am convinced that we can use Davincis micro fluidics... turbulence drawings.
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So let talk about next gen firing
The barrel release could be routed to drive the exhaust through channels which drive micro-turbine motors that slurp back through the external of barrel and infuse with water.
A flash hider such as a "3 prong" achieves the same affect with no moving parts, also suppressors can pretty much eliminate all flash and offer hearing protection and additional signature reduction by reducing the db levels and changing the pitch of the noise.
Yeah for a fraction of the cost in complexity, weight and issues with consumables a suppressor does all of what they were talking about and more. The US army is in theory going to a new rifle and issuing suppressors to every (frontline) infantry unit with the NGSW contract.
(We'll see how widely the new system and everything actually gets deployed but it was an important part of the whole program at least)
Why not just build one in? I guess I'm accustomed to assault rifles having flash suppressors because the one that I've actually handled and lugged around and shot with, the Valmet RK 62, does have a suppressor built in, a distinctive feature [1].
I'm not seeing anything about a built in sound suppressor just a flash suppressor which is a fairly common feature on modern assault rifles and their civilian variants. You don't generally build in a suppressor because they're technically wear items as the hot gases will slowly erode the baffles over time. That plus their extra weight and cost meant most militaries only issued them to units that were built for stealth missions in the past.
A bit yeah though they went from 20-inch M16s at the beginning of the GWOT to 14.5 or less as the main weapon so there was space to slap a suppressor on but you'd give up the maneuverability gains of losing that length. The NGSW winner is pretty short barreled before the suppressor is added and it required particularly spicy (high pressure) ammo to still be effective at that short of a length.
You’re basically describing “muzzle brakes and flash suppressors, but with more components to refill/repair”
Separately, using the force of the round (either via a gas tube or via direct rearward motion) to propel the action of the firearm isn’t really an AK47 thing, it’s common to all semi automatic rifles and predates the AK47 by quite a while.
"propel the action of the firearm isn’t really an AK47 thing, it’s common to all semi automatic rifles and predates the AK47 by quite a while.
"
Kalashnikov invented the easiest way to manufacture this behavior... This is the reason its the most heinous of weapons.
I am talking about something different. And thats OK.
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I am talking about a specific method of funneling muzzle output to funnel through your suppression...
I am talkingabout a hydro-enahnaced flash press which does a certain thing. Please talk about what that certain thing is.
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The most environmentally way to reduce muzzle flash. Cloud of water vapor as an expulsion of the muzzle such that it interacts with the blast easily enough to expel the right amount of water vapor through the expulsion chamber as the expression continues through the valve, (barrel) and its in-flame-ant mitigated by the entrenchment water vapor cloud to expel the munition, but still keep other perams in check?
AK47 isn’t the first rotating bolt gas piston carbine with muzzle devices with booster effect, it’s just an evolution of Sturmgewehr concept and one of the first generation assault rifle so retroactively categorized.
I’ll skip over lubed suppressor concept as I don’t know more than Google tells us :p
In all honesty, there isnt much room to improve the actions of modern assault rifles. There are dozens of post-stoner improvements that have bern tried. Millions have been spent on them. They have all been shelved as to complex or cumbersome. The gas-operated rotating bolt is so elegant, so reliable, that fundimental improvements are hard to imagine.
Adding water to the equation? Rust, mud, weight, boiling ... you would need some radical improvements to justify such added complexity.
I suspect there should be a lot of room for improvements, just that we are not able to perceive them without first- or second-world war going on.
I remember reading about importance of a newfangled barrel free-floating construction on carbines, soon after the Afghan war started. The examples used at that time were kludgy top-rail secured things supposedly used by mysterious SEALs guys. Later I saw Crane stock for the pair of chemical lights.
Today, those are slim M-LOK with rail on top and secured to the barrel nut, HEL-STARs, and MOE SL stocks. Oh and Russian Army standard infantry rifles are now cheap AKs with f*’ng buffer tubes, and G36 now has short aluminum mounts to avoid floppy carrying handle issues(“polymer degradation” fiasco).
What caused all those changes were clearly the wars.
I don't think muzzle flash is a big problem in today's rifles. Any powder left burning by the time the bullet exits the barrel is wasted energy, so things tend to get optimized pretty thoroughly (this is the field of internal and transitional ballistics). Carbine-length firearms (if they're chambered for rifle rounds) do tend to have bigger issues with muzzle flash. Flash suppressors [1], either integrated or add-on, help and have exactly zero complexity compared to a hypothetical water mister.
Muzzle flash is a HUGE problem with modern ar-15 style rifles. You won't get 100% efficiency until something like 22-26 inch barrels, but that's a VERY long gun to be using (and even those have muzzle flash).
With all the urban combat, there's a push toward shorter and maneuverable. In something short like the 10.5" M4A1 CQBR, flash becomes a much bigger problem (especially in dark rooms where it can be positively blinding to the shooter).
A suppressor helps with this issue, but it also starts adding back length to the gun (somewhat defeating the purpose).
300 blackout supposedly helps the problem (I've never shot it from a SBR) and also has better short-range (esp subsonic) ballistics compared to 5.56, but it too has muzzle flash.
The newly selected Army XM5 rifle and cartridge were designed for super-high pressures and achieving high speeds in a short barrel likely causing even more muzzle flash. Thankfully, this rifle is going to be suppressed for everyone by default. Unfortunately, it's super heavy (and that's without the super-heavy optics), has less ammo per magazine, and despite the goal, is still going to be blocked by higher-level body armor, and is still 36" in a SBR configuration (for comparison, the Israeli CTAR-21 is 30% shorter at just 25" providing rifle firepower in a SMG package).
My reading is that snipers are a very specialized soldier type that can benefit from cammo, but it's way less useful for other soldier types.
A sniper lies prone for a long time, with really heavy cammo (think netting, foliage, etc). Staying put is a big deal.
Regular soldiers constantly move about, which means their cammo has to be more practical and lightweight, and is also less effective due to said movement.
How much of this is due to the US military spending the past generation dunking on goatherds? I imagine the pattern on your uniform is entirely irrelevant when up against an equivalent technology adversary with proper artillery and air power. On the other hand having the guy with the AK be 20% more likely to miss his first shot sounds like it’s worth doing some research on your clothing’s appearance.
Speaking of, is traditional garb at all effective from a tactical standpoint?
> it baffles me why militaries didn't realize this earlier
Waffen-SS used dotted camouflage in the late 1930s (Platanenmuster), so depending on what you mean by “earlier” the idea of camouflage without “large blobs” isn't that modern.
The Erbsenmuster from 1944 is an even better example of this type of camouflage.
The ability to easily print and create those patterns has likely improved over the years to where it's cheap enough to be worth the mild improvements vs the cost of the printing of the uniforms.
Plus, like another commenter said camouflage is a last to second to last line of defense. Most units aren't moving stealthily in close proximity to their enemy and those that do adopt better camouflage techniques like ghillie suits or using terrain to hide while staying still (eg: waiting to ambush another group).
As a Finn, my conception of warfare is probably biased towards a specific type that happens in woodlands with short sightlines and lots of natural concealment. Direct-fire engagement distances tend to be short, infantry tactics are informed by the desire to get as close as possible without being seen, and by unit movement (possibly under aerial surveillance) while giving away as little information as possible.
I do think that the Finnish M05 woodland camo [1] is one of the best in the world =)
Yeah mine is probably colored by being from the US and it's recent wars where overall stealth wasn't a huge consideration because the force disparity was so great
Finland also has some interesting doctrine in anti-tank which leads to fun images like [0] of people absolutely COVERED in anti-tank mines or launchers. Part of being next to a much larger country I guess.
Yep, and the Finnish doctrine has been pretty much vindicated by the Ukraina invasion (although a full-scale land assault against Finland has long been seen as a rather improbable scenario, that hasn’t stopped us from hoarding AT weaponry and maintaining a large artillery force).
Those things are hellishly heavy and being "that guy" that has to carry them is a form of punishment too.
These particular photos look like comic relief.
Those yellow anti-tank mines are 10 kg each, which means that dude would be hauling at least 160 kg = 353 lbs extra weight. Doable perhaps but definitely not used in combat.
Max loadout is more like 4 of those anti-tank mines hanging off your gear and carrying 4 in your hands, and that will guaranteed wipe you out. Hauling 4 total any longer distance is the usual amount.
Max loadout of the APILAS anti-tank rocket launcher thing is usually two on your back, and that'll practically immobilize you in Finnish terrain.
I thought this hearkened back to the days of banners. You gotta know who's on who's side for any sort of effective early modern warfare in europe, otherwise you'll be shooting your own more than you'd like
It does sound as if there's not much methodology in this business, beyond empirical testing. Like, is there a science of 'camouflagology'? [oops, when inventing words, never mix latin and greek]
It just seems like it's basically lore, gathered from talking to fgillies and field experience, augmented by tests (which may be omitted, or the results ignored). Anyway, it might be fun to take a minor in camouflagology.
Note that this seems to be more particularly about natural forms of camouflage / etc., as opposed to military camouflage used by humans. But the two areas are clearly related.
Regardless of what you call it, it does appear that there is some science that goes into at least some aspects of this. See, for example:
So basically, "if I make them fractal they look like patterns in nature, and if I scale tiny pixel fractals on screen up to the width of a bolt of cloth they still look like fractal patterns in nature, and if I get it right the details end up about the same scale as details in nature, mostly" kind of thing?
> "Pixels have minimal impact on the ambient vision but a large impact on the focal cone causing further delay as the brain attempts to process the increased detail, when pixelation in camouflage is done correctly (color and scale) the brain will confuse the background noise with the pixels, removing the anomaly as a threat or delaying the identification of a threat. (6)"
I think squares are easier to fit together than dots and probably triangles.
If you used dots you have irregular spaces between them. This may or may not be a good thing, but it is certainly going to be different to the dots themselves.
Hexagons could work though.
But judging by the linked site and some Googling, I'm going to say no one knows for sure because no one has tested it.
Pixelation by itself does not produce any camo effect. It just happens to be easier and cheaper to produce fractal camo patterns on clothing out of pixels - it can be literally printed. And at any range at which the pattern is likely to work anyway, the individual pixels aren't really visible.
CADPAT works terrifyingly well in the temperate forests of Canada during spring/summer. I had a chance to go try and to spot people wearing CADPAT in the early 2000's and it was a royal pain to try and see them compared to the olive drab or even the US woodland patterns.
Just a fun aside: when Canada invaded Afghanistan, there was a lack of the arid variant of CADPAT. It left soldiers to land in the brown and tan desert wearing vivid green camouflage designed for summer in the Canadian rain forests.
>I find it bizarre that this is all done by private companies, competing in public competitions, with royalties to be paid for the chosen design. And I'm quite surprised that some designs were found wanting because they don't work under IR (e.g. the soldier shines against the background). That sounds like they're using the wrong dyes; surely a decent design methodology would lead to such problems being remedied by incremental improvement?
It was fixed AFAIK. IIRC issued CADPAT clothing were controlled items in 2000's because they had the the treatments designed to work against near infrared. Civilian CADPAT lacked those treatments so companies like Tru Spec[1] could sell it on the open market. There were other teething issues I am aware of; the dyes bleeding into splotches instead of the digital pattern as called for, as well as fading issues after laundering. Fixed of course but it took some iterations.
[1] I just double checked, Tru Spec never sold it. There were some smaller outfits in Canada that produced CADPAT available on the civilian market for short time; Drop Zone Tactical out of Edmonton for sure was one. Rumor mill is that it was material made by Consoltex under military contract that failed to meet the military's specifications and sold off to licensed DND manufactures to recoup costs.
> Just a fun aside: when Canada invaded Afghanistan, there was a lack of the arid variant of CADPAT. It left soldiers to land in the brown and tan desert wearing vivid green camouflage designed for summer in the Canadian rain forests.
This is a (kinda funny) plotline in Generation Kill.
> CADPAT works terrifyingly well in the temperate forests of Canada during spring/summer. I had a chance to go try and to spot people wearing CADPAT in the early 2000's and it was a royal pain to try and see them compared to the olive drab or even the US woodland patterns.
That reminds me of a story I heard about the "chocolate chip" US desert camo used in Desert Storm in 1991. Basically, the US designed their "desert camo to be effective in the desert of the American Southwest. But we ended up actually fighting in the Iraq/Saudi/Kuwaiti border region instead of the American Southwest, and it turns out that the deserts are different enough that the camo was not particularly effective.
> Just a fun aside: when Canada invaded Afghanistan, there was a lack of the arid variant of CADPAT. It left soldiers to land in the brown and tan desert wearing vivid green camouflage designed for summer in the Canadian rain forests.
That reminds me of the times we chose to wear snow pants but not jackets, because there was snow on the ground but not much elsewhere.
What was worse, CADPAT or UCP? I couldn't find it in the article. Instinct is that CADPAT was worse, but UCP was just that style without the contrast thus negating one of it's features (disrupting the human shape with high contrast).
Thanks. Is MARPAT what the Canadian soldiers showed up to Afghanistan in?
Edit: looks like the wore the forest green stuff to Afghanistan. The only articles I can find suggests they did it on purpose, to stand out for peace keeping reasons, but that could easily be damage control. Anyone know the real story? GP suggests they just didn't have an arid design at the time (which I would believe).
I can't comment on Canadian forces, but I can, with some reasonable level of confidence, say that some number of U.S. forces arrived with old forest green BDU pattern (despite the existence and previous use of the "chocolate chip" pattern) simply because that's what we had.
Can't speak to exactly why they didn't have it, but it was not a deliberate decision ("It's my uniform," said Master Cpl. Perry Morrow. "I'd rather wear this than no clothes at all.") from a relevant CBC article at the time about it(1))
For years afterwards whenever there was a discussion about equipment and supporting troops, it was brought up as an argument in favour of more purchases.
CADPAT is the Canadian camo. MARPAT is the American USMC camo. The difference is that MARPAT has a lot of browns and tans in it, while CADPAT is mostly green; the pattern is the same otherwise.
During the I-for-get-which war, the army hired color-blind spotters because the enemy camo turned out to be fooling fully sighted people but was less effective with red-green color blindness. I don't recall if it was texture or contrast issues but they stood out against the trees and shrubbery enough to locate.
So we not only have to worry about invisible spectra, but some filters on visible light may reveal the target as well.
That’s kind of like hunters who buy expensive camo and then their wife washes it with laundry detergent that contains brightening agents. To human eyes it still looks like camo, but to the deer you end up looking like Barney the Dinosaur.
Practically all of the non-bleach "whitening" detergents work by adding UV reflectivity. Humans perceive the result as brighter, without being able to accurately say why. Plenty of animals see UV light, and it wouldn't surprise me if militaries had wideband sensors beyond just IR.
This was used in Vietnam. My neighbor growing up had this condition and was a spotter in Vietnam. He'd be flown over areas of jungle in a helicopter and he would be able to easily spot camouflaged structures. He would then photograph them and mark up what he saw. He parlayed this experience into a successful career in photojournalism after he got out of the military.
Very real issue. My uncle used to be a big hunter (he died a couple years ago), and could never see other hunters wearing the required blaze orange, but when they were wearing camouflage he had no problem seeing them in the woods.
I have lots of other stories about the wierd things color blind people see and don't see. (My sisters are color blind, none of my family sees colors exactly the same, makes for some weird situations)
Survivorship bias perhaps, on the vest products (not the animals). Only the blaze orange vests that don't trigger the animals get commercial success; word will get around what the "good hunting products" are. Probably works by having the vest be similar brightness as the camo, once you combine the reds and greens.
The answers to your first paragraph is in another part of the series:
> Now we can address the Micropattern - digital pixels. These are required to add background noise and texture matching with the background and this is designed to fool with the focal area of the eye - when you are looking directly at or close to the target to make it more difficult to recognize what you are looking at.
The following text seems to be mostly talking about things that have nothing to do with square pixels, it just sounds like that's what was how the dude programmed his generating algorithm. To the best of my reading, the goals he achieved with the patterns don't interact with the squareness.
I personally find the who camouflage switch to every branch of service, including the navy to be bizarre. Who thought it was good idea for navy seamen to be camouflaged in the water? With that line of reasoning why didn't the airforce get their own camouflage to look like a flight line? hah
> After six years in the fleet and some controversy, the blue-and-gray cammies could be headed for Davy Jones' seabag.
Until the Javascript cool kids invade your country because the USans elected a guy with a family grudge against your president. Then the Javascript cool kids decide whether to blow you into assorted body parts and pink mist in front of your parents because you tried to help a wounded child.
.... the USans will also come back in 20 years to make a film about how invading your country and blowing you into a pink mist in front of your parents made their solders feel sad.
The Air Force did get their own camo - the ABU (Airman Battle Uniform) digital tiger-stripe; based on a Vietnam-era tiger-stripe uniform but with a color palette similar to the UCP; only with more blue.
In fact, it's not just their own camouflage pattern, the ABU actually had a distinctive blouse and pants that are different from the BDU that came before, or the ACU that the Army had adopted. Then they took the sage-green fleece from ECWCS Gen III (what the Army was wearing), and added the APECS Goretex parka that the Marine Corps was wearing, only in the ABU tiger-stripe rather than MARPAT.
Most of the actual battlefield airmen (i.e. the people who might reasonably expect to find themselves in combat conditions where camouflage could help like combat controller, TACP, PJ) didn't wear it anyway.
As pointed out elsewhere, this is very largely about esprit-de-corps in the context of a military organization, even if your job is actually avionics maintenance or personnel.
It does seem like a huge waste for all the services to have their own completely distinctive utility uniforms though - the pendulum is swinging back the other way now with the Army, Air Force and Space Force all back in the redesigned ACU/OCP with stitching color (black/spice-brown/blue) as the service-distinctive element.
I don't get why the branches in which very few folks are likely to need camo (basically anyone other than the army, then, and some sub-divisions of other branches like the marine corp) don't go with old-school olive drab or navy or something. Those single-color uniforms with a slightly dressy cut looked damn slick. I'd think that'd be better for recruiting or improving morale or whatever than the camo uniforms (which, often as not, are the butts of jokes and not considered at all appealing)
Then again, maybe those old styles only looked good when they were made with nice materials, like wool and heavy waxed canvas, and would look bad with cheap modern synthetics.
One advantage of camo uniforms for working utility uniforms is they tend to be effective in hiding things like grime and mud, which consequently means you need to launder them less frequently to keep up the same appearance. If you've got a solid single-color uniform, chances are that these will stick out like a sore thumb. That was one thing that sailors liked about the old US Navy NWU (the one that camouflaged you very effectively if you fell in the water)--really good at hiding paint drips.
With regards to looking good, I don't think it's necessarily that the look good with appropriate materials, but more that they look good only when they are properly starched and the like to maintain crisp lines.
> I personally find the who camouflage switch to every branch of service, including the navy to be bizarre. Who thought it was good idea for navy seamen to be camouflaged in the water? With that line of reasoning why didn't the airforce get their own camouflage to look like a flight line? hah
Not everything the military does is about effectiveness. Sometimes senior NCOs want the enlisted to "look military", not just be effective.
Here's another example: why is the military PT (physical training) test varied by sex and age? If it was only about combat effectiveness, presumably there'd be 1 set of values that determine if someone had sufficient fitness relative to the rigors of combat (or whatever their job requires).
In addition to things other people have said there's a lot of roles that aren't combat so increasing the number of women who can qualify can fill out those roles (logistics, the reams of sundry clerical work, maintenance, etc) where physical strength isn't as critical helps fill out a volunteer army.
There's a concept called 'tooth-to-tail ratio' which is the ratio of combat personnel to non-combat personnel in an army. The modern US army has a tooth-to-tail ratio of about ~1:8. This isn't necessarily a great correlation to physically demanding versus not-physically-demanding jobs, it does illustrate how tiny the front-line portion of the military actually is.
That was the concept I was gesturing at but I couldn't remember the name. Militaries in general but the US in particular are predominantly logistics organizations with a lethal last mile delivery focus. It's part of why they're so good for responding to natural disasters in far flung island countries, they're used to delivering goods with little infrastructure at the destination.
The new Navy camouflage is designed to keep your uniform looking clean when you are working around paints and oils and so on. It’s purely for workplace aesthetics and not intended to hide you from anyone.
It was a diagnostic test. Like how a loss of fuel efficiency is a sign that something is wrong with an engine, if someone can’t meet the standard something has gone wrong. Which is why it was treated as a pure pass fail.
It’s a standards test, where failing can potentially get you kicked out.
While also used as a diagnostic to let you know if you’re slipping, its primary and only stated purpose is to uphold an objective standard.
This makes variations by age and sex concessions to that goal, rather than design elements.
The standards test is different. Occupational Physical Assessment Test results are Unqualified, Moderate, Significant, or Heavy which is then used to decide if someone meets an appropriate standard.
Meanwhile the Army would sometimes retain people incapable of passing the old age and gender standard. As an extreme example people with missing limbs could be retained.
Former US sailor here.
The “camouflage” blue is no longer in use, but when it was, we jokingly referred to each other as “ocean warriors”.
The reasoning for why this pattern was chosen for working use, was that it hid oil stains and fresh paint really well, letting you wear the uniform longer.
The reality? Some politician or admiral wanted to leave their mark.
In development since 1983, the camo saw no use in the field until it was deployed during the first Gulf War (1990-1991).
The purpose was to disrupt primitive Soviet-era night vision. The grid pattern was intended to interfere with the generated grid used by these devices for targeting.
Even after plenty of research I could find no cases of this pattern ever disrupting anything. By the early 90’s, night vision technology had progressed greatly and this green grid was completely ineffective. There is even some anecdotal evidence it made detection easier!
An interesting macro-variant is the Berlin brigade tank camo pattern, which is surprisingly cool! No idea where that comes into uniform camo pattern history nor how efficient it is, but who cares. It's cool beans.
Dazzle camo wasn't so much a "hide me" camo as it was a "hide data needed to shot me" camo. It was designed to make it harder to estimate heading and speed so it was harder to calculate accurate shots by submarines and naval guns which needed data about the target ship's speed, distance and heading to calculate an accurate shot.
This is true for modern infantry camo, as well - it aims to disrupt the human silhouette at a distance, not only to make it harder to spot, but also to make it harder to aim center mass (can be tricky if the visual border of said mass is all fuzzy and blends into the surroundings!).
It's definitely the final nail in it's widespread use but it was used somewhat up to the end of WW2 though that focused on anti-kamikaze painting in the Pacific theater. Japan was several years behind the rest of the world on radar so it stuck around longer in the Pacific too before that transition to anti-kamikaze but even there by the end of the war Japan was using radar fire-control.
My guess would be that the thinking behind it was that in urban environments you have more straight vertical/horizontal lines (houses, roads etc.) and thus wavy camouflage patterns would stand out more from the background.
With no knowledge what so ever my gut reaction is to simply point to nature. Leaves get eaten/bitten/broken/ripped, a branch might be in front of another adding depth with similar patterns, rocks and sand in a desert can vary sharply at different focal depths, urban environments can have dozens of materials in use along with random detritus and objects at various focal depths.
Well, that ghillie suit doesn't look pixelated to me - it just looks like it has quite a few straight-sided polygons in it.
Actually, that's what's bugging me most about this camo made from regular square blocks: it looks really easy for a recogniser to spot. No AI <spit>, an old-fashioned neural network would be enough to recognise edges, and then spot squares on a grid.
[Edit] Yeah, I get that your average stag deer doesn't have access to thermal imaging and neural networks. But this is military camo, not deerstalking camo.
>[Edit] Yeah, I get that your average stag deer doesn't have access to thermal imaging and neural networks. But this is military camo, not deerstalking camo.
The average grunt doesn't have access to thermal imaging or neural networks either, they might have a crappy Vietnam-era flashlight, their weapon system, and a reasonable compromise between number of rounds and weight as spare mags. Especially when that grunt is a "third world" fighter. Pixelated camo like ARPAT saw the bulk of its current use in Afghanistan and Iraq where the most sophisticated thing the enemy might have is a pair of binoculars and a cellphone.
The pixilation, to the human eye, is much more natural than large splotches of a few colors because terrain/vegetation/buildings in natural light have all sorts of depth and shadow variation, the pixilation is much harder to pick out than fairly large blotches of random color.
MARPAT is a very well documented case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARPAT In its case, it was chosen because the blocks actually blend very well into environments when viewed from a distance.
I doubt they have to be pixelated. They have a higher resolution than the other patterns which introduces more noise, which is probably good. But I would guess that smooth patterns would work too. It just doesn't matter since it would look the same from longer distances.
I find it bizarre that this is all done by private companies, competing in public competitions, with royalties to be paid for the chosen design. And I'm quite surprised that some designs were found wanting because they don't work under IR (e.g. the soldier shines against the background). That sounds like they're using the wrong dyes; surely a decent design methodology would lead to such problems being remedied by incremental improvement?